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Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Paloma.
Oi gente! Meu nome é Paloma.
Welcome to whiteboard lessons by PortuguesePod101.com.
Today, we’re going to talk about basic comparisons in Portuguese.
First, let’s see the sentence pattern.
So, the pattern we have today is [noun] (in this case, we’re going to talk about places) é mais [adjective] que [another noun].
[Noun] is more [adjective] than [another noun].
For example, we have:
Curitiba (which is a city in Brazil) é mais frio que São Paulo.
Curitiba é mais frio que São Paulo.
Curitiba é mais frio que São Paulo. [enunciated]
“Curitiba is colder than Sao Paulo.”
Campo Grande é mais calmo que o Rio de Janeiro.
Campo Grande (another city) é mais calmo que o Rio de Janeiro.
Campo Grande é mais calmo que o Rio de Janeiro. [enunciated]
“Campo Grande is calmer than Rio de Janeiro.”
So, as you can see, we have the cities here and the only exception is Rio de Janeiro that we need to add “o.” So, most cities and states in Portuguese don’t have gender, but only Rio de Janeiro, we say “o,” o Rio de Janeiro, okay?
Here, you can see the main pattern, mais frio que, which means “colder than.” So, we have mais and then the adjective frio.
Mais calmo que, “more calm than,” okay, that’s the literal translation.
Curitiba é mais frio que São Paulo.
And Campo Grande é mais calmo que o Rio de Janeiro.
Okay, so now, let’s see the main dialogue.
Serra da Saudade é pequeno?
Bem, Serra da Saudade é menor que São Paulo.
Serra da Saudade é pequeno?
Bem, Serra da Saudade é menor que São Paulo.
So, Serra da Saudade is a city in Brazil, so the literal translation would be serra which means “hill of” Saudade. Saudade means it’s the longing feeling, you know when we miss someone, that’s that feeling, saudade.
Serra da Saudade é pequeno?
Bem, Serra da Saudade é menor que São Paulo.
“Is Serra da Saudade small?”
“Well, Serra da Saudade is smaller than Sao Paulo.”
So, as you can see here, we have pequeno, but we don’t have mais pequeno.
We have menor. Why is that? It’s because a few adjectives in Portuguese have another form, just like we have “small” and “smaller” in English. In this case, we have pequeno and menor. You cannot say mais pequeno, okay?
Let’s see a few more vocabulary you can use here.
Frio, frio which means “cold.”
Quente, quente means “hot.”
Calmo, calmo is “calm.”
And the opposite is agitado, agitado, “busy.”
Pequeno, pequeno, “small.”
And grande, grande, which is “big.”
Okay, so frio, you’re going to say mais frio.
Quente, you’re going to say, mais quente.
Calmo, also, mais calmo.
Agitado, mais agitado.
And then we have these two exceptions at the end; pequeno which becomes menor, menor, and we have grande, which becomes maior, maior.
So, if change the sentence and replace Sao Paulo with Serra de Saudade, we’re going to switch these two, right?
So, it will be:
São Paulo é grande?
Bem, São Paulo é maior que Serra de Saudade.
Okay, now the culture point.
The more you go to the north, the hotter it is in Brazil. The Amazon region is very hot and very humid. And the southern part of Brazil is where you’ll find the coldest winters, which is not that cold if you compare it to America or other countries.
Curitiba is in the southern part of Brazil and it has colder winters than São Paulo, which is a little bit above.
São Paulo is the biggest city in population in Brazil. It’s located in the southeastern region of Brazil.
Campo Grande is almost in the middle of the South American continent. It is the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul.
Then, we talk about Rio de Janeiro. That’s one of the most famous cities of Brazil. It’s located on the coast, so it has many beaches and is most famous for its carnival, which is the biggest of the world or maior as we talked in this lesson.
And lastly, we talked about Serra da Saudade. It is located in Minas Gerais State. It is the smallest city of Brazil in population.

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